Translations
F.O.G.MPrimary
F.O.G MessageBut they did not drive out the Canaanites living in Gezer; the Canaanites have remained within Ephraim to this day—though they were made to serve as forced laborers.
F.O.GSecondary
The F.O.GBut they did not dispossess the Kena'anim dwelling in Gazer; the Kena'anim continued living within Efrayim to this day—but were put to forced labour.
KJV
King James VersionAnd they drave not out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer: but the Canaanites dwell among the Ephraimites unto this day, and serve under tribute.
BSB
Berean Standard BibleBut they did not drive out the Canaanites who lived in Gezer. So the Canaanites dwell among the Ephraimites to this day, but they are forced laborers.
Footnotes
This verse lands like a shadow over everything that preceded it. The Hebrew *mas-oved* (forced labour service) is the precise terminology used for Israel's own bondage under Pharaoh in Egypt (Exod. 1:11)—a searing irony: the liberated slaves become the enslavers. More gravely, the failure to dispossess is a direct violation of the *cherem* command (Deut. 7:1–5), and the phrase "to this day" signals that covenant compromise has calcified into normalcy. Gezer would not fully pass into Israelite hands until Solomon's era, when Pharaoh conquered it and gave it as a dowry to his daughter (1 Kgs. 9:16)—centuries of disobedience finally resolved by a political marriage. FOG retains *Kena'anim* and *Gazer* to preserve the Hebrew texture; FOG Message uses conventional English names to underscore the theological continuity with the pattern of incomplete obedience that haunts the book of Judges.